Modern music



Modern music | |

Your teacher will select the most appropriate activities from the following options:

Performing

Learning Outcomes: You will work on your own or as part of a group, learning to play some music by a composer of modern classical music. You may also be given time to work on an individual programme of music.

Success Criteria: You can play your part accurately and in time with others, where appropriate. You can identify strengths and areas for improvement in your playing.

Understanding Music

Learning Outcomes: Through reading information and carrying out practical tasks, you will learn about the history and development of modern music, including learning about some new orchestral instruments.

Success Criteria: You can recognise and describe the following concepts:

• Melodic: atonal, chromatic, cluster, contrary motion, octave, semitone, syllabic, tone, whole tone scale

• Rhythm/tempo: cross rhythms, moderato, ritardando, rubato

• Texture/structure/form: homophonic

• Timbre/dynamics: a cappella, arco, flutter tonguing, harp, snare drum, piccolo, pizzicato, tuba

• Style: minimalist

Composing Skills

Learning Outcomes: With a partner, you will create a short piece of music with a melody which is based on a whole tone scale and unusual chords.

Success Criteria: You can create an interesting rhythm to fit a melody based on a whole tone scale. You can create interesting sounding chords which are not major or minor triads.

|Modern music |

|What is modern classical music? |

|The period of music from the late 19th century onwards. |

|Composers chose to move their music away from the Romantic style. |

|Many new ways of producing sound have been explored, as well as experimenting with different timbres and harmonies. |

| |

|History: |

|Composers such as Débussy and Ravel wrote pieces which focused on mood and atmosphere rather than a strong emotion or story (impressionism) |

|Composers such as Grieg and Dvořák wrote pieces influenced by the traditional music of different countries (nationalism). |

|Composers such as Schoenberg and Berg deliberately ignored traditional methods of writing music and explored atonality (expressionism). |

|Composers such as Stravinsky and Hindemith wrote pieces which drew inspiration from the Classical period, adding new ideas to the rhythms and |

|harmonies (neo-classicism). |

|Composers such as Stockhausen and Varèse experimented with electronic musical instruments and technology, including using recorded environmental |

|sounds as a basis for their music (musique concrete) |

|Composers such as Lutoslawski and Cage wrote pieces which left some of the music to chance, meaning no two performances were ever the same |

|(aleatoric). |

|Composers such as Reich and Riley wrote pieces based on simple rhythmic and melodic ideas repeated many times with very slight changes each time |

|(minimalism). |

| |

|Interesting information: |

|The terms impressionism and expressionism stemmed from visual art and literature as the musical ideas seemed to fit ideas and emotions that the |

|pictures and words portrayed. |

As you can see from the history section, many different styles of music have been explored in modern times. At National 4/5 level, you only need to learn about a very small section of it. If you go on to study Higher Music, you will find out more about modern music!

Some modern music is atonal. Atonal music has no sense of key and does not sound like it is in either a major tonality or a minor tonality. Notes clash rather than sound good together.

|[pic] |Sonata No.2 from Sonatas & Interlude for Prepared Piano (Cage) |

The modern orchestra - woodwind

|The piccolo (Italian for ‘small’) is a half-size flute with most of the same fingerings as the flute. It sounds an octave higher|[pic] |

|than written. | |

• Piccolos often play in unison with the violins or flutes to add sparkle and brilliance to the overall sound, because of the high pitch of the notes produced.

|[pic] |The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra: Variation A |

| |piccolo and flute: presto – (Britten) |

The modern orchestra - strings

|The harp is a plucked string instrument which is usually triangular in shape. Although the harp is one of the oldest |[pic] |

|instruments, it is not a common member of the symphony orchestra as its quiet sound means it is more suited to being played | |

|as a solo instrument. | |

• Most harps are between 60cm to 1m 80cm tall and have 22 to 47 strings which are made out of gut, wire or nylon.

|[pic] |The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra: Variation I |

| |harp: maestoso (Britten) |

The modern orchestra - brass

|The tuba is the largest and lowest pitched brass instrument. It was invented in the middle of the 19th century, originally|[pic] |

|as a marching band instrument. It is often used to play staccato bass notes but can also play sustained melodies. | |

• The first Friday in May is International Tuba Day.

• Tubas come in different keys to suit different situations. Most tubas that are used in orchestras are tuned to the key of F or C.

|[pic] |The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra: Variation L |

| |(trombones and tuba: allegro pomposo (Britten) |

The modern orchestra - percussion

20th century orchestras tend to feature a large range of instruments in the percussion section, such as:

|[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |

|snare drum |bass drum |cymbals |triangle |tambourine |

|[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |[pic] |

|guiro |xylophone |glockenspiel |castanets |bongo drums |

The work The Armed Man for orchestra and choir by the Welsh composer Karl Jenkins (b.1944) features a large percussion section. The snare drum and piccolo feature in the opening movement:

|[pic] |The Armed Man (Jenkins) |

As part of the period of experimentation, composers tried using instruments in different ways:

Pizzicato – when a string player plucks the strings with their fingers.

• Usually, string players use the bow, which is called arco.

|[pic] |Playful Pizzicato (Britten) |

Flutter tonguing – when the performer rolls their tongue, making a ‘drrr’ sound.

• It is most often heard on flutes, recorders, bassoons, trumpets and trombones.

• It is popular in jazz music.

|[pic] |Telephone (Phyllis Louke) |

Richard Strauss used flutter tonguing on horns in his piece Don Quixote, to imitate the distant bleating of sheep:

|[pic] |Don Quixote (Richard Strauss) |

|The modern style of impressionism began with art. Impressionist artists would try to capture the image of an object |[pic] |

|as someone would see it if they just caught a glimpse of it, studying the effects of different lighting. | |

• Their paintings used bright, vibrant colours

• Images were created without the use of detail, sometimes with visible brush strokes and blurred edges.

• Some famous Impressionist artists were Claude Monét, Edgar Dégas, Alfred Sisley and Auguste Renoir.

In music, impressionism similarly focused on suggestion and atmosphere rather than a strong emotion or the depiction of a story. It introduced features that were uncommon in the previous Romantic era, such as:

• Clusters - groups of notes played together that create clashes in the harmony

• Unusual scales such as the whole tone and pentatonic scales.

A whole tone scale contains no semitones and moves in ascending or descending order by one tone at a time.

To play a whole tone scale on a keyboard, you need to use a combination of white and black notes.

To play it on tuned percussion or another type of tuned instrument, you need to use a chromatic instrument.

Firstly, check your instrument is chromatic, by playing a chromatic scale. A chromatic scale has 12 different notes and moves in ascending or descending order by one semitone at a time:

[pic]

Now learn how to play a whole tone scale:

[pic] [pic]

Claude Débussy (1862-1918) wrote a work for huge orchestra as he wanted to create as many harmonic colours as he could. He included whole tone scales in his piece.

As you listen to the music, think about how you would describe it as sounding like the sea:

|[pic] |La Mer (Débussy) |

|[pic] |You are going to work with a partner to create a piece of atmospheric music based on the whole tone scale, using question and |

| |answer. You should only use the black notes of the keyboard/piano. |

1. Partner 1 should play the accompaniment (chords) and partner 2 should play the melody (based on the whole tone scale). Your music will be in free time, with no strict pulse.

2. On a keyboard, select a voice which allows the sound to echo when the notes are played, or use a piano with sustain pedal.

3. Using only the black keys, partner 1 should experiment with creating different chords that sound interesting.

• Try not to have many traditional major or minor chords.

• Some notes may clash – this is allowed for this style of piece.

• Chords can be as few as 2 notes or as many as 7 notes.

4. Using only the black keys, partner 2 should experiment with creating short melodic ideas.

• Most notes should be used singly but you can have some 2 or 3 note chords.

• Try and use a variety of rhythms.

5. Once you have generated some ideas of your own, work together with your partner:

• Alternate a sustained chord with different short melodic ideas.

• The time between each chord does not need to be regular.

• You can improvise or use specific notes, or a mixture of the two.

6. Perform you piece to the class. Discuss:

• How well you and your partner have experimented with and developed your musical ideas.

• How effective an imaginative each piece is.

• If the piece conveys the creative intention.

• What you would do differently next time and why.

In the 1960s in America, a new style of music was invented, called minimalism.

• Minimalist music is based mostly on simple rhythmic and melodic ideas.

• Patterns are constantly repeated with gradual, slight changes.

• The harmonies are typically simple.

• There is a steady pulse (or drones).

|[pic] |Terry Riley was born in 1935 and has been a pioneer of minimalist music. His compositions have been deeply influenced by jazz |

| |and Indian classical music. |

His minimalist piece ‘In C’ has no tempo markings and is designed to be performed with freedom. It has 53 short sequences with each performer asked to repeat a given sequence as many times as they choose before moving to the next sequence:

[pic]

Another minimalist piece is Terry Riley’s In C (1964), the score of which is on the first page of this unit. It has no tempo markings as it is designed to be performed with freedom. There are 53 short sequences with each member of the

|[pic] |In C (Terry Riley) |

|[pic] |Steve Reich was born in 1936. His compositions are influenced by African drumming and Balinese gamelan music, both of which |

| |are contrapuntal and use cross rhythms. |

|[pic] |Visit |

| |Click on ‘Music in the 20th century’ |

| |Find ‘Minimalism’ and click ‘revise’ |

| |Explore the pages about Steve Reich, listening to the excerpts |

| |Complete the Test Byte on minimalist music |

|Philip Glass was born in 1937. He has written operas, musical theatre works, 10 symphonies, 11 concertos, solo works, |[pic] |

|chamber music and film scores, three of which have been nominated for Academy Awards. | |

• Glass dislikes being called a minimalist composer, instead describing his style as “a composer of music with repetitive structures”.

In the following piece for solo piano, the right hand plays a rhythm called triplets while the left hand keeps a steady quaver rhythm, creating cross rhythms:

|[pic] |Dance 8 (Philip Glass) |

|[pic] |John Tavener was born in London in 1944 and studied at the Royal Academy of Music. He was knighted in 2000 for his |

| |services to music. |

John Tavener’s choral piece The Lamb is for SATB a cappella choir, with the text taken from a poem by William Blake. The sopranos introduce the theme, upon which the whole work is based. When it is repeated in bar two, the altos sing the same melody but upside-down, creating contrary motion and clashes in the harmony in places:

[pic]

The tempo of the piece is marked ‘flexible’. A common musical word for this is rubato, to allow for more expression in the music. Much music of the Romantic period also used rubato.

|[pic] |What is unusual about the time signature of this piece? Why do you think the composer chose that? |

Tavener’s piece is homophonic, almost entirely syllabic and it contains many clashes in the harmonies. The range of the voices is limited in order to emphasise the simplicity of the music.

|[pic] |The Lamb (John Tavener) |

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